Friday, August 28, 2009

Mining Equities: "Copper and gold still top but lithium adds a bit of flavour" (SQM)

From Mineweb:

The most in-demand mining stocks among the world's 100 biggest miners, by value, feature most commonly connections to copper, gold, and also to coal, and specialties such as uranium and lithium. There is also a notable presence of stocks with connections to India, currently supported by a country equity market that ranks as one of the world's best-performing, having supplanted China earlier this month, where equities are cooling off from 12-month highs on fears that liquidity could be reined in....

...Seen on a 12-month basis, copper stocks have for some months ranked as the most in-demand among mining subsectors. This has been especially the case since early June, when global mining stocks as a grouping dipped sharply, and then started to move steadily upwards to 10-month highs as seen over the past week or so.

Over the past three months, investor portfolio flows have been net-positive into all mining subsectors. Reflecting and confirming its leading 12-month status, the listed copper subsector has been most in-demand, followed by nickel, Tier II iron ore, zinc, iron ore, Tier I platinum, silver, aluminium, platinum and molybdenum. The least impressive flows have been noted for the oil sands subsector, followed by oil, potash, uranium, gold and diamonds.